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Genesis Invitational | Stats, Trends & Things You Don't Need To Know
Riviera Country Club
Par 71: 7,322 Yards
Poa Annua Greens
Fairways Hit 47.24% (2nd hardest on TOUR)
Greens Hit 54.17% (3rd hardest on TOUR)
Ball-Strikers Reign Supreme
My friend and colleague, Greg DuCharme, is always suggesting new and fun data projects for me. He sees golf through a different lens and I love diving into the data at his recommendation.
Recently he asked me for a statistical breakdown for each golfer, “how they gain their strokes”. For example, if a golfer gains 1.0 stroke per round in total and 0.5 per round come from SG: Approach, that would mean 50% of that golfer’s Strokes Gained comes from Approach.
I ran this for every golfer in the last 50 rounds and the results are clear: the path to the top is with your longer clubs.
Only four golfers in the Top 20, designated with red dots, gain more strokes in their short-game than their ball-striking.
The Greatest Hole On TOUR
For my money, the 10th at Riviera is a perfect golf hole.
It’s a “drivable par-4” but in name alone. It plays anywhere from 280 to 315 yards but only 1.3% (5 of 373) of drives last year finished on the green. Still, two of those drives would go on to three-putt for par.
It’s truly risk/reward. That term is way overused in golf but it’s true at this hole. The average score last year was 3.88 with 373 golfers.
Eagles: 1
Birdies: 106
Pars: 212
Bogeys: 43
Double Bogeys: 11
There are three adopted strategies off-the-tee. 1) You can dump it in the bunker short of the green. 2) You can lay-up short and try to hit something with spin on your approach. 3) You can blast it long and left, take your chances with the angles and lies. The best part – none of them are all that great! Plenty of guys make birdie and bogey from all three locations.
It’s an absolute beauty of a hole. If you’re headed to The Riv in person, post-up behind the green and enjoy the show.
Mr. Consistent
There’s so many different ways to get it done in golf and I often spend time bemoaning about “ceiling”. Let’s switch it up and talk about floor. I took every golfer’s last 50 rounds, worldwide, and wanted to see how often every golfer gains strokes to the field.
Patrick Cantlay 42/50 (Gains 84% of his Rounds)
Cameron Smith 41/50 (82%)
Jon Rahm 39/50 (78%)
Rory McIlroy 37/50 (74%)
Paul Casey and Sungjae Im 36/50 (72%)
I was a bit surprised not to see Jon Rahm’s name atop that list. However, when you take the same 50 rounds and only count when golfers gain 3+ strokes per round, Rahm separates himself.
Jon Rahm 23/50 (Gains 56% of his Rounds)
Patrick Cantlay 18/50 (26%)
Cameron Smith & Justin Thomas 14/50 (28%)
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s only one golfer in the field does not register a single 3+ SG round in his last 50. That man is… Kyle Stanley. Every other golfer has at least three such rounds.
Rock Bottom Rickie
Rickie Fowler is $6,600 on DraftKings this week, marking the second lowest price on him since the start of 2018 (83 events). The only time he was cheaper was the CJ Cup in October ($6,400). He would go on to score 127.5 DraftKings points and finish 3rd that week.
Now, I’m certainly not saying Rickie will finish 3rd this week, just pointing out the historical territory we are currently in.
The Extremes of Riviera
Riviera is difficult. But it’s also easy. Can both be true? Kind of. The Par 5s are some of the easiest holes on TOUR, with all three ranking in the easiest 15% of holes. Number 1 was literally the 5th easiest hole (out of 918) on TOUR last season. If you throw Number 10 into the mix, that’s four holes that rank inside the 27th percentile of easiest holes on TOUR.
However — the opposite is also true. Number 12, Number 15 and Number 14 are all part of the 60 hardest holes on TOUR. The Top 8% of hardest holes if you will. There are few courses that can really boast that many holes that lie on the extremes.
With that being said, it’s a rare opportunity to get one over on the Propmakers over at PrizePicks. They are laying “Birdie or Better” props with the understanding that we will see a stout scoring average this week, but not realizing that golfers could make five birdies en route to shooting something over par. I’m focused on the following:
R1: Sungjae Im over 3.5 birdies – He’s made 4+ birdies in 16 of his last 20 rounds and ranks 17th in Birdie or Better % this season.
R1: Collin Morikawa over 4.0 birdies – In eight rounds at Riviera he’s never made less than three birdies and half of them have been 4+. He finished 26th and 43rd those weeks so it’s not like he played all that well.
You’ll want to secure those before the lines move (they will).
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Comp Courses
I like using Quail Hollow, Augusta National, TPC Summerlin and PGA National as comp courses for this week. There are some statistical similarities that I think are worth diving into. Here are the best players in the field, at those courses (and this one), since 2008:
Good Luck
Rick